Maybe I liked a bit more the first instalment, The Alyenist, but you can read this book on its own for sure.

At the end of 19th Century, psychiatrists were a novelty nobody had heard about before, and they were called Alienists, as they were supposed to deal with the alien parts of the brain. The main protagonist uses his knowledge to solve a certain mystery, and uses a concept which nowadays we are more familiar now but that at the heart of Victorian society was not evident at all: women used to be separated in two categories: honest or whores, the former being wife/mother angels and the latter being criminal vicious ugly things.